april days.

april '19, in which we lived the truest spring in memory. new york seemed to open to us like the pages of a children's book, all color and light and music and surprises. cherry blossoms sang so brightly that for one shining moment i believed they might stay forever. they didn't, of course, and they don't -- that's what makes them so special.

days were a tangle of hours in the kitchen that sounded like stardust and tasted like sea salt and olive oil and dill. there were sun-dappled afternoons and whole, lovely weeks of fog. there were music classes and laundry days, sunday farmers markets and trips to the playgrounds and sweet time spent with all four grandparents. we celebrated easter with family and grandma georgia's birthday. we read poetry over breakfast and baths. we spent weekends and dinners 'round full tables with friends, and we were charmed by the sight of small hands reaching and interwoven: in francis brown's sky, the mainardi girls shine brighter than bright. life came at us in a big way, nudging us to think and talk and study the shapes of our dreams. it was another month of miracles with our sunbeam of a boy. francis at fifteen months is a living love song of stretching on tiptoes up-up-up to kiss mama through the shower curtain, dancing more than he steps, hair wild with mama's color and papa's curls, fingers twirling through my braid ribbon as we nurse, delivering into my hands his first bouquet, a first pair of rain boots, fistfuls of blueberries. we lived under the blossoms and ended days with dirt on our knees, dirt under our nails, smelling of trees, sticky with berry jam, sleepy in that really good way, et cetera, delicious et cetera.

in high bloom.

whispered my heart: remember us like this, central park in high bloom, one shining morning of spring, inside the hour before papa sat down to work on an ordinary monday, mama in a dress the color of tea trailing close behind you, you always checking over your shoulder to make sure i am only steps away (i am only ever steps away), pausing to nurse, pausing for crepes on the way home, pausing for every stick and fallen blossom in your view, the three of us belonging so wholly (so holy) to each other, squeezing every last drop from this life.

how soft a petal is.

on our evening walk under the cherry blossoms in central park, under clouds holding tight to the rain (baby bringing me fallen petals on legs wobbly like a just-born deer, husband looking back at me with joy in his eyes, my own knees dusted with dirt in that way of a mama so wondrously in love), my beautiful boys utterly broke my heart.